YouTube has made some unfortunate mistakes, violating the laws of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by stating they were aware of how many children were on regular YouTube (which has a 13+ year age restriction) instead of YouTube Kids (which has no advertising content). Because of this, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants to enforce the age restrictions and control the audience of YouTube. This is amazing, however, the route they are rushing into taking poses a huge threat to the creators of audience members of YouTube.

    According to the FTC, content targeted toward audiences is as follows:

• Videos intentionally aimed at children
• Videos including characters, celebrities, or toys that appeal to children including animated characters or figures
• Channels with a predominantly 13 and under audience
• Videos containing activities that appeal to children

    These points above are extremely vague. You may have seen these things in mainstream media broken in pieces such as Bob's Burgers (an animated series aimed toward adults), Deadpool (a superhero from Marvel who makes R-rated jokes), and countless video games depicting violence. Though these medias meet the above "qualifications" of children's content, they are able to be marketed toward adults safely by including ratings. Most TV shows, movies, video games, and books have ratings these days due to the fact that most of the content accidentally falls under one or more points above. YouTube videos tend to not have these.

    Videos miscategorized accidentally are subject to fines up to $42,000 per video for a creator's most recent 600 videos. This can and will put many independent creators in debt.

    I propose the FTC re-evaluate the law to state that creators are able to put ratings watermarked on their videos, at the beginning of their videos, and/or on their channel homepage to categorize themselves. Media is a grey area no matter how you look at it. No media is completely child-friendly or not, and putting the pressure onto creators to choose if their content fits in one of two categories or be at risk for financially-crippling fines is unethical and wrong.

    I agree that the FTC and YouTube need to take action for the safety of children using the internet, but this law needs to be re-evaluated. As a content creator, I am taking the stand for a change. You should too.

    Please see the attached video by MatPat from Game Theory for more information on why this is so dangerous.